Household hints as easy as PVC

Charles Sanders' parents were children of the Great Depression, and they passed on at least one lesson to their son.

"They were can-do, make-do-with-what-you-have people," says Sanders, 50, in a drawl that hints of rural stock, "and I guess I inherited the same self-reliance from them."

Sanders lives on a 40-acre farm in Shoals, Ind. The farm has been in his family more than 100 years, and it has been his homestead since 1977.

Sanders, his wife, Patti, and their children -- Jordan, 17, Robby, 15, and Maggie, 12 -- seem to have everything they need on their 40 acres -- a garden, a small orchard, timber and enough pasture for raising their beef cattle.

And that's pretty much how he got into writing books.

Come again?

"It seems I was always trying to make stuff work around the farm and didn't always have enough money to do things the way I wanted to do them," said Sanders, whose 9-to-5 job is as an officer with the Indiana State Department of Conservation.

Sanders figured others could benefit from his knowledge, which is how some of his projects became articles in Backwoods Home, an Oregon-based magazine that promotes homeowner self-reliance.

Some of those articles became the foundation for a manuscript Sanders sent to Peter Burford, publisher of Burford Books in Springfield, N.J., which specializes in the outdoors, sports, nature, travel, gardening and military history. Burford liked the manuscript, so those can-do, make-do ways ended up as Sanders' first book, The Self-Reliant Homestead: A Book of Country Skills, published in 2003.

In February, Sanders hit the shelves with The PVC Project Book: 101 Uses for PVC Pipe in the Home, Garden, Farm and Workshop. "In my first book, I actually had a section for working with PVC," he said. "I always seem to have some extra pieces around. Then Peter [Burford] asked me if I had enough projects on PVC to write a book about it."

Turns out, he had more than enough. Of the new book's 101 PVC items, which range from holders for yard tools, fishing rods and glue guns to frames for signs, banners and hunting targets, about 70 percent of them are his own.

"The others I got from talking with friends who, like me, have reason to make things around the house or barn."